Looking for some basic Bard info.

Strongly considering rolling one here. I'm going to be solo/molo for quite a while until the high 90ish range, at which point I have a paladin partner waiting for me. My main concern is the levels 1-99 journey though.

1. What sort of mercenary works best with a bard? Tank to buff/heal with songs, or would I be better off tanking things myself with a healer mercenary?
2. What does their DPS look like? Is it going to be a long, grueling process to kill mobs? I've played other classes that felt like that.
3. What sort of song lineup am I generally looking at to kill things with? I'm assuming a regular melody can fit about 4 of them for a given fight?

Thanks in advance.

Tank merc works well for the early levels, has dps, keeps agro off you, and has high regen so not as much need for a cleric merc. Bard DPS isn't really a thing until sometime around 105-110 when dots got boosted (I think TBL 110, but wasn't playing then). After the DOT boost, bard dps is still slow building, it kicks in after 12+ seconds of singing when you have some DOTs stacked up on the target. Melee dps isn't noteworthy except during full burn, which doesn't come up often until you level up and get your AA done. Melody size depends on ranks of AA tune stuck in your head (starts at level 71).

When you say "until the high 90ish range, at which point I have a paladin partner waiting for me" do you mean your partner is high 90ish, or your partner is max level and you can group with him in the high 90's. Makes a huge difference on feasibility of you leveling up solo. If he's high 90's, he can group with a high 60's, which is easy to reach. If he's max level he can group with a 95, which will be an enormous slog for a molo bard imo. Either way, if I wanted a buddy to level up a bard for me to play with, I'd make an alt to level with him. If time isn't available to level an alt and he's high 90's, it usually won't be available for grouping after you level up either. EQ is seasonal tho at cap, if your buddy is 125 he may be getting new LS content done while groups are more available and may have time for an alt come spring/summer.

I'm generally loathe to spend money in games on something I can do myself, but leveling a bard to 100 molo unassisted vs buying a level 100 heroic... I'd break out the wallet and buy the heroic if I didn't have powerleveling options.

Ah okay, thank you. So even in defiant gear it's going to be slow killing with a bard? Like there's no way to help expedite the killing?

It's my sister, who just dinged 99 with her paladin. She convinced me to roll up on her server (been playing on FV the last year or so) because her options for soloing have become increasingly limited (just been doing easy stuff in Shard's Landing). After much thought about what I would want to play as her partner I'm strongly considering Bard. I don't really have a lot of experience on a character past 85 (and I only got there with a heroic boost, who knows how I'd level without that?) so it's going to be a huge learning experience, even moreso on a different class that, to be frank, has always kind of scared me a little with the stories of its difficulty. xD

Bards expedite killing by having a bigger group. That's the secret. Charm swarming is a thing, but mob dps vs mob hp is a generally bad deal imo, you won't benefit from it long enough to make it worth learning to do.

The difficulty stories come from pre melody, the /mel command lets you type /mel 1 2 3 4 5 6 for instance, and your bard will chain thru your first 6 spell gems on loop until you tell him to stop. Prior to /mel, you had to start song 1, let it sing 3 seconds, stop song 1, start song 2, let it sing 3 seconds, stop song 2, start song 3, etc.

A paladin/bard duo will still be somewhat limited, best off killing undead, but having a puller, a tank, a healer merc and a dps merc would help a bit. You can join her pretty quick tho since she's only 99, I think level 66 or 67 isn't nearly as bad as level 95 to reach molo. If you guys don't plan to group with others much, I'd make a mage, bst, or necro to duo with her. They're more active classes, the bard will be tons of staring at the screen waiting for the mob to die, due to melody other than bellow there's just not a lot to do after the mob is engaged. Kick, melee and songs are all automatic. Besides that, any of the 3 pet classes should be easier to level up molo.

True, though this not being a TLP, probably isn't going to happen haha.

That's true too; well that and the swarm kiting I saw folks on P99 doing. But I know that's not possible here so I was more willing to consider it.

That's fair. Thanks for your honesty. I'm still debating what I want to play with her. Class and character identity is kind of important to me though so I'm just debating what I want that to be at this point. But that said I've been a mage on FV for a while so I'm kinda looking for something different.